Thread: 2001 Corvette Stock Speaker Questions

well, first thing i urge you not to go the 5.1 surround route. you really can't do that anyways without getting a dedicated center chan speaker and amp. you can use the pac adapter (or the soundgate adapter which is supposed to be of higher quality) to retain your stock woofers. that will allow you to retain the stock sub but you will need a small amp to power the other speakers.

you could use the stock wiring but since the amp is in the back you're better off making new runs to the speakers. the corvette is the easiest car to run wiring in, i doubt it'll take you much longer to run wire to the doors then it would running wires from the amp to the harness behind the radio.

my personal recommendation would be to dump the idea of keeping the stock speakers and the 5.1 setup and drop the rear speakers as well.
since you were planning on running the 4 stock speakers you were going to need a four chan amp and a bose interface. Stick with the 4 chan amp, now the bose interface is about $100. if you put that money towards raw drivers such as:
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=295-364
which are on sale right now for $31 each
and then buy some seas neo tweeters (or northcreek tweeters) for about the same. you are going to achieve far far superior sound for about $25 difference.
here is some ref:
http://www.zaphaudio.com/tweetermishmash/

Scott you're the man! Thanks for your help. Couple more questions: Those Dayton 7" will fit in the door? Do I need to get aftermarket door adapter plates? Or will they fit where the stock speakers reside? Can I use the factory rear speakers, and just run new wires to them from a 4 channel amp? Also what kind of usb sound card do you recomend? I've decided to ditch the idea of surround. Do I need to use a crossover for the door/rear speakers? Sorry for all the questions, they might be answered somewhere else, but I figured if you have the time, you could help me out. I know you have gone through all of this already. Thanks again

you need door adapter plates, easiest thing to do is remove the bose plate from the door, then tape some paper over the hole leaving some overlap. then use a razor to cut out the rough opening of the hole you just covered. now mount the bose plate back on the door and trace the outline on the paper. remove the bose plate and there is your template with mounting holes (made when you screwed the bose plate back on) now get some 1/4 mdf a cut out the shape. this will give you a plate for you to mount your speakers too. all you need to do is cut the speaker hole and mount them. while you have the door off it's a great time to cover up the big hole toward the back of the door. you can get some masonite from home depot and use that to better seal up your door. you'll have to shave down the styrofoam a bit on the door but nobody will ever know. :-)


the 7" will fit w/o a problem. i have 7" in there now and there are a handful of people using 8" woofers as well.

you'll need all 4 chans for the setup i've suggested. you aren't relying on a passive x-over with that setup, you'll be doing the processing on your computer. you can pump plenty of power to those speakers and as long as you sound deaden your door you'll get some deeper bass. rear speakers just make tuning harder and doesn't really add much except for overall spl imho. for the next few weeks drive around w/o rear speakers and once you get desensitized to not having rear speakers you'll realize that the soundstage has been improved. with your new speakers and amp you'll be able to make up in spl what you lost by deleting the rear speakers. i'd say 85% of the guys over at corvetteforum are running systems w/o rear speakers.

as far as usb soundcards, i'm not really up to date on soundcards anymore so you'll have to research that yourself.

Are you using a 7" "sub" in the door, or a "full range speaker"? I would like to use elemental audio components because that's what kind of amps I'm using, and that's my sub type too. "full range" http://www.edesignaudio.com/product_...products_id=49 or "sub" http://www.edesignaudio.com/product_...products_id=33 Thanks again
Travis

if you're going to go the prebuilt route then go with the full range. those subs have very limited use and value. definitely the wrong choice for your application. If you go the route i suggested earlier; with a little tuning, you'll have a far superior sounding system then you will with the component systems made by ED